Single Daddy Scot (Hot Scots)

‘And now she’s dead?’

‘Yes,’ she answers simply.

‘But I don’t know who she is. If he’s mine, why didn’t she seek me out?’ I swallow my frustration. ‘How can it be that I have a son with a woman I don’t even recall? If I could just . . . if you could help me jog my brain, somehow. I realise how pathetic this sounds. What a bastard this makes me look.’ I clamp my lips closed. I hadn’t meant to sound so disrespectful. So harsh.

‘Her name was Annelise Bernard. I understand she was a dancer. And French.’ I blow out a rush of air. Annelise. Do I know an Annelise? ‘I believe she may have been modelling when you met. And I understand you spent a weekend together four years ago after meeting at a wedding.’

‘A wedding?’ I sound like a fucking parrot.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t tell you anymore. Perhaps I could pass on your number to Annelise’s flatmate. With your permission, of course.’

‘Does it not seem weird that her flatmate knows about me, knows about my son, yet I can’t even remember . . .’ Annelise. A wedding. I spent a weekend holed up in a hotel with a model—a European model following the wedding of a friend of a friend. Was she French? And how long ago was that? I remember we survived on room service for two full days, fucking like bunnies between food and naps. We’d squabbled when I’d insisted on paying the bill for her room as well as my own but had parted amicably. I’d walked her to her Mini Cooper, kissing her on the cheek. I’d never seen her again.

‘And my . . . Louis. He’s with the flatmate now?’

She tilts her head to the side as though weighing her brain rather than her words. ‘No. I’m afraid not. Louis is with foster parents at the moment. Emergency provisions had to be made.’

‘He’s living with strangers?’ Every muscle in my body draws tight. Is this what it feels like to have a heart attack? My body reacting like this—is it trying to tell me something?

‘His mother died quite suddenly.’

‘A car crash, you said?’

‘Yes. In these difficult circumstances, we would look to extended family or even friends willing to take parental guardianship. But Annelise and Louis had none.’

‘But the flatmate, he couldn’t stay with her?’ She shakes her head, a million of my own thoughts flittering away. He’s in a stranger’s home, maybe wearing a stranger’s pyjamas right now. Eating a brand of cereal that is strange to him. ‘He has no one?’

‘He has foster parents, for now. For later, I’m hoping he has you.’

5

Mac

So it turns out I have a son.

Miss Morton left me that morning with her business card, information on paternity testing, and a general sense of unease. She also left me with a photograph of a little boy with my unruly hair and brown eyes. I didn’t need any DNA test to know I was looking at a replica of me, circa twenty-eight years ago.

Life. It’s a confusing fuck. One minute, you’re hobbling along, clutching your wounded heart, and the next thing you know, that same battered muscle is expected to expand enough to care for someone else.

I don’t know if it’s science or myth—DNA or Mother Nature—but when faced with the choice of taking on or turning away your own flesh and blood, there isn’t much thought. Only action.

‘Ma.’ I slam the door and trip over a tiny pair of running shoes. ‘I’m home.’ See, it works both ways. When I made that call, my own parents were on the next train to London, eager to meet their grandson. Nature or nurture? Not sure who’s to blame. Or thank, in this case, given that they’ve been living here for two weeks now.

‘In here, Mac,’ my mum calls back.

I make my way into the third bedroom, hastily furnished with one of those plastic beds made to look like a racing car. We’ve had so much to sort out as well as kid shit to buy—toys, clothes, and all that sort of stuff. For now, he’s making do. We’re all making do. He has his own duvet and stuff, things from his home—his old home—but I feel like he needs so much and I’ve so little to give.

Guilt, thy name is fatherhood.

‘Where’s the wee man?’ My mother sits on the tiny bed, so basically, she’s sitting on the floor.

‘He’s in the bathroom,’ she replies, discerning I mean Louis, not my dad. At least, I hope.

‘I didn’t miss him, then?’ Wishful thinking, maybe? I’ve mostly avoided bedtimes by being at work. The way I look at it, I’m saving us both some pain because if I get home before Louis is asleep, we have tears and tantrums at my involvement. Having me around seems to make him miss his mum more than ever, and he eventually cries himself to sleep. Conversely, if he’s asleep before I’m home, according to my mum, he goes down like a dream. It doesn’t take the brain for Scotland to work out he blames me somehow for not having a mother anymore.